India's holy men and astrologers are dusting down their cosmic calendars
and honing their star-reading skills to help politicians decide their
fate in the fortcoming general election.

Scores of mendicants and yogis or religious men, known for
delivering electoral successes, are busy organising the heavens
for candidates from all parties trying desperately to win elections.

And in the prevailing political uncertainty, scores of MPs do
not eat, travel or hold meetings unless their celestial minders declare the moment propitious.

Jayaram Jayalalitha, whose party's withdrawal from the coalition
led to its downfall, reportedly locked herself up in her New Delhi hotel
room in the suspense-filled days leading up to confidence vote in
parliament - refusing to meet anyone as the moon was in its inauspicious eighth house.

After the moon moved on the following day, Jayalalitha reportedly
performed a special prayer to propitiate a powerful female goddess
before emerging from seclusion.

She then precisely timed handing over
the letter to the president withdrawing her party's support to the
government after 9 am - but before 10 am - once the inauspicious
period had ended.

Unlucky number

Numerologists said the number 13 had been the undoing of prime minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee's government as it sought the confidence vote
after 13 months in office.

"Number 13 which in numerology totals up to
four (1 plus 3) represents sadness," said numerologist Pramod Kumar
Churamani.

Vajpayee had earlier headed a 13-day government in
1997.

Other astrologers, however, did not need inside knowledge of the cosmos to predict what analysts have been saying in newspapers for
months: that India was in for turbulent times and general elections were not too far away.

Irrespective of their political affiliations, there are few
Indian politicians who do not have a string of astrologers,
palmists, numerologists or occultists on their payroll,
dominating every public and private move.

Whether they believe everything their astrologers tell them
is another matter.

A universal practice

Astrology and palmistry is something all Indians grow up with.

Charting star movements is common practice

Most Indians have horoscopes - an elaborate grouping of
Sanskrit symbols and diagrams prepared on the basis of date, place
and exact time of birth aided by old charts detailing star movement.

And although Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister,
ridiculed astrologers, succeeding premiers, including Nehru's
daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, have been among their
most willing clients.

Mrs Gandhi popularised soothsayers in political circles, a year
after she was voted out of office in 1977 for imposing an emergency
when her political survival was threatened.

She turned to them for
succour and many believe they were responsible for her return to power in 1980.

Indira Gandhi: First popularised political soothsayers

Several of her supporters now claim Mrs Gandhi was
assassinated four years later by her bodyguards because she did not take
the necessary precautions recommended by her astrologer.

Her Cambridge-educated son Rajiv, cynically dismissive of
astrologers before joining politics, travelled across the
country visiting influential holy men when he was up for re-election in
1989.

But Mr Chandra Shekhar, the stop-gap prime minister who
served just for three months in 1991 was perhaps India's only modern
politician to publicly defend the practice of astrology.

Even Mr T N Seshan, India's highly-principled and mercurial Chief
Election Commissioner, who presided for five years till 1996 over the
entire electoral process, made no move without consulting the stars.

Earlier, whilst retiring as India's cabinet secretary, the
country's senior-most civil servant in the late Eighties, he
precisely timed the hand-over to the second in keeping with the
stars.

Unfortunately, however, Mr Seshan's auspicious time differed from
the one chosen by his successor, also a die-hard numerologist.

A lengthy
debate between India's senior most civil servants followed, leading
to a bureaucratic compromise by which the hand-over was extended by
exactly 60 seconds.

Wielding power and influence

Today there are over 100 senior astrologers patronised by
politicians in New Delhi, but a majority are charlatans who pick up
titbits of information and promote themselves as
extra-terrestrial political informants.

Some, however, are plants by intelligence agencies or more
often by rival politicians wanting to know their opponents strategies
and ambitions.

Ultimately, however, a handful end up enjoying great power and
influence depending, of course, on the success of their patrons.